


The Beginning

by ilcuoreardendo



Series: Tales from the Isles [5]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Aleksander - Freeform, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Literal Sleeping Together, One of Daud's baby assassins, Rescue, Two lost people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 04:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12182769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo
Summary: It begins with him saving her from a few rogue gang members. The Hatters or the Eels. Emma can’t keep them straight. They all look and smell the same to her. Usually she’s able to avoid them, turn a corner early or take a carriage that deposits her near her apartment. But this evening, she’s cursing her luck and wondering if this will be the last time she sees the sunset. Funny, she always thought it would be the plague that would take her.





	The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was "twilight." 
> 
> Prompt me at my [Tumblr](http://ilcuoreardendo-fic.tumblr.com).

* * *

It begins with him saving her from a few rogue gang members. The Hatters or the Eels. Emma can’t keep them straight. They all look and smell the same to her. Usually she’s able to avoid them, turn a corner early or take a carriage that deposits her near her apartment. But this evening, she’s cursing her luck and wondering if this will be the last time she sees the sunset. Funny, she always thought it would be the plague that would take her.

One moment there’s fetid breath in her face and hands on her breasts and the next, the man is slumping, mouth open, to the ground, his two friends following him.

“It’s not safe to be on the streets at night.” The voice is strange, almost tinny, slipping out from behind the respirator in the old whaler’s mask. The man perches on top of the retaining wall, some strange bird made of rubber and leather. She has the sudden urge to explain herself—she’s coming home from a job she sorely needs to keep food on the table and the heat on in her little flat and the noble she works for likes to keep her late and she’d rather not be out at night because she doesn’t like the dark at all—but she ignores it and rushes away, uttering a “thanks” over her shoulder.

She sees him from time to time after that, on her evening walk home, as twilight purples turn to the black of evening.

On the fourth night, she realizes it’s because he’s _letting_ her see him, in the shadows of a building, in the branches of a tree, on the top of a lamp post in his strange-bird pose. Any man who’s capable of such things would be capable of keeping himself hidden.

She has no troubles with any other gang members and the one time some lowlife tries to approach her, he gets as close as reaching into his pocket and opening his mouth before his eyes widen and he turns and vanishes back into his reeking alley. She looks behind her and though she doesn’t see her strange guardian this time, she catches a glimpse of shadow moving up and away from her, toward the rooftops.

At the end of the second week, as she’s unlocking the door to her flat, a shadow falls across the window, large and human shaped and she turns toward it. “Would you like to stay for tea?” she asks, and hears a throaty laugh.

His name is Aleksander. Behind the mask, he is younger than she would have thought, maybe even a few years younger than her. But his eyes, dark and rich as Serkonan chocolate, are older than his years. The eyes of someone who’s scrounged and bartered and traded dignity for survival, who’s spent more than one moment at the wrong end of a blade and seen the worst humanity has to offer.

Which is, perhaps, why he accepts her invitation, sits with her at her worn hand-me-down table, mask next to his plate, sipping Tyvian Grey and eating the last of the apricot tartlets she’s been saving for a special occasion.

When life has mostly shown you the worst of people, you have to take the reprieves when you find them. Her weeks begin to end with him sitting at her table.

 

 

She’s startled from sleep one night by the sound of something falling over followed by muffled cursing. The light next to her bed, always on, illuminates a shadow in her wash room, hunched over the sink and dripping red onto the white ceramic. She’s at his side in a moment, checking the wound on his shoulder and pulling the whaling mask over his head to reveal his face, flushed and damp, eyes narrowed in pain, pupils blown wide.

“What happened?”  She asks, as she loosens the strap of his bandolier, unbuttons his coat.

“The wrong end of a knife,” he sighs, shrugging out of the heavy leather and stripping the white shirt, gone berry red at the shoulder, over his head. “It’s not that deep,” he says, “But I did want to clean it up before making my way home.” His lip curls and Emma doesn’t want to think about what filth he might crawl through between here and wherever it is that he spends his nights. He’s always fastidiously clean when she sees him, but sometimes he carries with him the faintest scent of stale water, mold, and something darker that she can’t place.

She cleans the wound with water and a small sliver of soap, pours a healing wash—a blend of herbs and roots her sister used to swear by—over it and fits it with a bandage and then offers him one of the painkilling tinctures she has. It’s only when Aleksander’s drank it down without protest that she realizes he has sat unmoving and watching her the whole time she fussed over him. She blushes, starts to pull away.

“Sorry,” she says.

“I’m not,” he says and he seems just a little breathless, eyes wide and wondering, searching her face. His arm slides around her, pulling her close. He presses his face to her neck, hides himself in her unbound hair and she wraps her arms around him, strokes her hands over the nape of his neck, over the soft pale curls of his hair, feels his breath hitch, feels him shudder. She wonders how long it’s been since someone took care of him.

A wave of drowsiness hits her then, the adrenaline wearing off and reminding her that it is the middle of the night.

She straightens, reaches for Aleksander’s hand and tugs him after her, flicking off the light in the washroom.

“What?” He blinks as she leads him toward the bed, pushes him down onto it and she swears that’s a blush starting at the base of his throat.

“It’s late. I’m tired. You’re tired.”

“I should—“

“You can go if you want. But I’d really rather you not fall off a roof because you were too tired to judge the distance properly.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, says, “Good point,” and begins to remove his boots.

Finally dressed down to sleep, Aleksander moves over to give her room and she hesitates a moment, watching his sleepy eyes blinking in the dimness, before switching off the bedside lamp and crawling quickly into bed next to him, his arms coming up around her as if they’ve done this a thousand times.

They curl together, her head tucked under his chin, the arm with his injured shoulder draped over her hip, their legs entwined. The night and the dark press against her window, but for the first time, in a long time, she pays them no mind.


End file.
